This is a new translation by W. Glyn Jones of William Heinesen's masterpiece and one of the most important Scandinavian novels of the 20th century.Music is at the heart of this book. The devotion to it of a group of amateur musicians forming the Boman Quartet prevents a series of dramatic events from turning into heart-rending tragedy. Music enables each of the musicians to rise above his own bleak situation. But there is humour, too, especially in the satirical, larger-than-life portrayal of the local sectarians, led by the bank manager Ankersen, as they seek in vain to break the spirit of the musicians. And humour of a more earthy kind in Janniksen, the huge blacksmith who is completely at the mercy of his petty-minded sectarian wife.

William Heinesen (1900-1991) was born in Torshavn in the Faroe Islands, the son of a Danish mother and Faroese father, and was equally at home in both languages. Although he spent most of his life in the Faroe Islands he chose to write in Danish as he felt it offered him greater inventive freedom. Although internationally known as a poet and a novelist he made his living as an artist. His paintings range from large-scale murals in public buildings, through oil to pen sketches, caricatures and collages.It is Dedalus's intention to make available all of William Heinesen's novels in new translations by W. Glyn Jones. So far published are The Black Cauldron, The Lost Musicians, Windswept Dawn, The Good Hope, which won The Nordic Prize for Literature , and Mother Pleiades. In 2017 Dedalus will publish William Heinesen's last novel, The Tower at the Edge of the World and in 2018 Noatun.William Heinesen is generally considered to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, Scandinavian novelists of the twentieth century.